


bound through dawn

by iniquiticity



Category: Critical Role
Genre: Author-Designed Dunamancy Mechanics, Essek Week (Critical Role), Essek Week 2020: Shadows/Gravity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: Caleb took in his long shadow, only his shadow had a space between the shadow and where his feet should have been, and the shadow wore an elaborate mantle with pointed ends, and had perfectly-quaffed hair."Essek?" Caleb said, and then his shadow nodded.Or: A rescue.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 8
Kudos: 124





	bound through dawn

Caleb and Caduceus were running an errand, looking for magical items and wares, when Caduceus grabbed his arm and stopped him. Caleb stared at him and jerked back, but the firbolog was strong.

"Look," Caduceus said, pointing at the ground. It was what passed for day in Uthodurn, their present location, and many bright lights were lit on the tunnel ceilings, casting a facsimile daylight across the underground city. In it Caleb took in his long shadow, only that shadow was ---

\-- The shadow was formless, most of it, as if to be covered by a long sheet, and there was a space between the shadow and where his feet should have been, and the shadow wore an elaborate mantle with pointed ends, and had perfectly-quaffed hair --

"Essek?" Caleb said, and then his shadow nodded, dramatically, enough so that it could be seen. "Essek, what are you -" He looked up into the street. "-- we should go somewhere where we can talk."

All two-and-a-half of them retreated into into an alley. Caleb brought his dancing lights out, casting the Essek-shadow against the ground. A hand appeared from the familiar mantle, gesturing him forward. He didn’t know what that hand wanted, only that it wanted him, and that was enough. He didn’t know what that hand wanted, only that if Essek was showing up in his shadow, Essek needed him, and he had to go. 

He looked up at Caduceus, who was watching him, leaning on his staff. "You will make sure I am - unharmed?" he said, haltingly, and Caduceus nodded.

Caleb knelt and reached out. Where he should have felt the stone floor he felt thin fingers, achingly, bone-chillingly cold. There was a tug on him that he went with and the absolute pull of magic reached out for something in his chest then -

\---- A ghostly Essek stood in front him, colorless and translucent, not much more than a silhouette against an eternity of an overcast sky. Caleb tilted his head and saw a soft silver cord drifting from behind him into nothingness, and then looked down at his own hands and saw he was ghostly as well.

“Hello, dawn,” Essek said, in a distant, tinny voice. The pet name felt strange in this place, so sunless, "I need your help."

A nod, quick, and then: "We are..." Hesitantly, Caleb reached around himself, felt the cord coming out of the back of his neck. "... in the ethereal plane?"

"Something close enough to it, though longer explanations would be better later. Suffice to say I was looking into alternate ways to move long distances and have encountered some unforeseen obstacles. For the time being, I am trapped in the Shadowfell."

"I hear that is a very dangerous place," Caleb said, and the frown crept across his lips, "How can we get you from there, dusk?"

"Go to my tower and dispel the magic on me and fight whatever it is comes out and wishes to keep me here." Essek glanced quick behind him, but Caleb saw nothing there. A beat and the drow was looking at him again, intent, shimmering. "Lords of the Shadowfell would prefer me their servant and, should you attempt this rescue, they’ll know. They'll send some beast or beasts when you try to pull me away. Dangerous things."

"We're coming right away.” He wasn’t thinking about the rest of them. He was thinking about Essek, and what he knew of the Shadowfell, and the flighty way Essek kept looking behind him. He took a breath, only he actually didn't, but there was the strange sense of the oxygen filling his lungs and steadying him, and no reality to match it. A beat. “Prefer you?” He said, only now the words processing. Prefer him their servant. Essek a captive in the Shadowfell, and how his whole chest ached and twisted. Essek was his. Essek was no Shadowfell lord's.

Behind the translucent silhouette of Essek, the roiling sky that made the world rumbled and shook. Essek looked up at it and shook his head. "I need to go," he said, quick, but not before he reached up to his ear and fidgeted. A blink later and he was closer, putting something in Caleb's jacket pocket, pressing an ice-cold kiss to his cheek. "There. That will help you with your spellcasting, and I will be in your shadow."

"Essek--" Caleb began, but then Essek took his hands and said something, and the words were arcane but they were strange rattling and watery and dark, and Caleb reached out and tried to grab him--

A gasp, a real breath, actual air filling his actual lungs. Actual bed under his actual back and actual hands touching him, blue hands in fact, and a blue face staring at him in concern, and when he shoved his hand his pocket he felt it, oddly shaped, and pulled it out.

"Caleb? Are you okay? What's that?" Jester was asking, quick and frightened.

"I'm fine," he said, even though his pulse was racing, even though he was still seeing ghostly Essek looking with wide eyes at the world-sky. Focus, Caleb, he reprimanded himself, and then studied the silver trinket. There were two pieces, one sharply pointed, fitting an elf ear, and then the most delicate chain linked it to the other piece, a beautiful, fairly large pearl with a pin-back closure. He looked down, but the room was lit in a way that stopped a shadow from being cast, and he was already hurrying, bringing up the globes of light. A mantled shadow, nodding.

"Caleb?" Jester said, again, and then her eyes went to his shadow and she gasped.

"We have to go to Essek's tower and rescue him," he said, and then he called them all in and told them the whole story, clenching the earring the entire time, and as he drew the teleportation circle he realized the little divots in his palm he'd made with it.

*****

The shadow pointed, leading them up and up and up and up, and through doors and secret passageways and strange portals. It was deeply disorienting to watch his Essek-shaped shadow reach out and open the doors in the tower. Sometime his shadow was gone entirely, and they would have to wait until it appeared again, the hair mussed. Once it returned without the mantle at all, which revealed a thin drow, still floating, the arms coming up to disarm a trap, slow. Caleb could not stop imagining whatever chased Essek through the Shadowfell. He didn’t know that much about the place, but Essek wouldn’t have run from something small. His mind conjured up strange, alien beasts trying to hunt down and enslave his other half, the dusk to his dawn. His chest felt heavy and cold. 

They got to the highest-most part of the tower and into a strange room, like a laboratory, in which along the wall was undoubtedly a bed, and in that bed was Essek’s body.

The body was still, not even breathing. The eyes were closed, his hands loose at his side. He was wearing a comfortable robe, belted at the waist. Without all the elaborate clothes and confidence, the body looked small, harmless. It did not look at Essek at all. Worse was the strange shadow that clung to it, little wisps of darkness sliding across the chest and down the bed like tendrils of dark smoke. It was strangely shadowed, a mismatch for the room’s dim lighting. When Caleb looked at the body from the right angle it seemed half-faded, like it could drift away. 

Jester was already running up to it, grabbing her holy symbol and praying. They saw, now that they knew what to look for, the outline of the green cloak, felt the surge of magic. 

And still Essek’s body remained still, shadowed. Caleb looked down at Essek against the floor, who shook his head. 

“I’ll try,” Caleb said, trying not to feel the creeping edge of desperation, and then he lifted his hand and twisted his fingers, the warm, familiar rush of arcane power rushing through him. He felt - heard- sensed the darkness, harder and colder than ever, that surrounded Essek. There was a rattling in his soul as his dispel brushed up against the cage of shadow around the body in front of them. 

Nothing. Essek turned his head to the side and was gone. 

“What do we do?” Fjord asked, “Should we use Yasha’s sword on him?” 

“Traveler?” Jester asked, and then to their collective, startled surprise, he was there, solid in his green cloak and the red hair flowing out of it. 

“My my,” the Traveler said, shaking the hood off his head and taking a step forward to stand next to Caleb and study the still form of Essek’s body, “Silly little drow, wandering where you don’t belong.” 

Caleb fought the immediate urge to take a step back. It was enough to know what Jester was capable of, to know what this archfey was capable of. It was enough to know the answers in their first conversation, about absolute chaos, to know that this pseudo-deity was just as much as a savior as he was a threat. 

“Can you rescue him?” Caduceus asked, and Jester, Caleb, and the Traveler all looked at him. 

“Mmmm,” the Traveler said, and then he held a hand about the still body of Essek. There was a faint green glow around his hand, and some of the shadowy tendrils that clung fell away. “You could do it.” 

“We tried!” 

“My dear,” the Traveler said, and smiled, putting one hand on Jester’s shoulder, “You’ve approached it all wrong. It’s not magic you’re trying to dispel. Too late for that, with the things coming after this one. You need to get his soul back. Tempt it. Make it remember where it belongs. Give it some, I don’t know, cute things you did together, or something.” 

Jester squared her shoulders and looked at Caleb. He had heard something about this, before. Something, somewhere, in the back of his mind rang in familiarity. He put his hand back in his pocket and found the earring and it was so cold to his touch that his palm burned. He squeezed it, let the throb vibrate up his arm until his whole body felt cold. 

When he looked up the Traveler was gone. He pulled his hand from his pocket and showed the rest of them the earring, and then Jester put her hand on his, and then Caduceus, and then Yasha, and then Fjord, and then Beau, and then, finally, Veth. 

Caleb closed his eyes and concentrated on the pain which pulsed from his palm. He saw in his mind’s eye the first time they had met. He saw opening the door with Cat’s Ire and Essek opening his spellbook. He saw Essek knocking at the door and they were eating dinner and talking about consecution. 

“You came to dinner!” Jester was saying, her eyes squeezed shut too, “It was really fun! I mean even when we first met you and I said that we should be friends and now I’m really sure that we are, obviously, and that’s how we’re going to rescue you, because you’d be pretty sad if we weren’t around any more and we’d be really, really sad. And you even came to the hot tub!” 

“You don’t have to float for us, man,” Beau said, to his left. 

“You’re a better person than you’ve ever been,” Caduceus. “And we’re going to bring you back for you to keep working on that.” 

“You saved me,” Veth, lower, on his right somewhere, “Without you I wouldn’t have been able to get back to how I’m supposed to be.” 

“We’re not gonna let some shadow lord take you,” Fjord. “You’re coming back here.” 

Caleb opened his eyes. His arm was numb, and the pain was making his shoulder twitch. When he looked past his friends he saw Essek’s body, and the shadowstuff that had been drifting off him was now coalescing above the still form, taking a shape. The shape had arms - a lot of arms. 

“I think it’s working,” he said, and now it wasn’t just the cold from the earring, but something in his chest was pulling, _pulling_ , making him set his feet and stare at the shadowthing, and the shadowthing didn’t have eyes but it was staring back. 

“His is mine,” he hissed at the shadowthing, his other hand touching the book holstered at his side, where he had written everything about Essek that had been him, how much it hurt to see Essek make the same gods-damn mistakes that he’d made, how much relief that he could change it, how it felt when they stood on the tower balcony together and Essek touched his hand. He could - did - had - stopped Essek from walking this path. He could - did - had -turned Essek towards something better, without all the pain he’d suffered figuring it out. 

“He is ours,” he said, louder, and the many arms of the shadowthing seemed to gain claws, and the thing was getting teeth, mouths --

“I got this thing,” Fjord said, and slid his hand from their pile, his sword appearing with a pulse of green. The shadowthing turned towards him. 

Caleb stared at the rest of them, felt the coursing agony of the note of pure cold in his hand. Essek’s earring, which he needed, which was part of Essek, his dusk, his shadow, who they were going to rescue, who they would _not permit to be enslaved_ \-- 

The shadowthing was getting eyes, eyes on Essek’s still form, eyes on Fjord and Veth, who was now hidden behind Fjord with her crossbow, eyes on Caleb and his clenched fist, which felt flayed, and he could not unlock his fingers now, felt the tether in his chest that went into some great beyond-- 

“Give him back to me!” Caleb shouted, and there was a pulsing **boom** that picked him up and threw him bodily against the wall. He looked and saw his friends in piles of books under bookshelves or in a mess of fallen equipment or a tiny waterfall of shattered glass. Other, of course, than Beau, who had caught herself mid-fling and was standing, fists out. 

He staggered to his feet and in the center of the room he saw the shadowthing, an amorphous blob of teeth and claws and limbs and eyes, all looking at all of them, and from the thing’s back was a long tether of shadow that led to a silhouette of inky blackness around Essek. 

Essek, who was standing on the bed now, his face unfamiliar fury. Essek, who was flickering in and out of reality, the shadow that surrounded him obscuring him and then revealing him, like cloud cover. 

Caleb looked at his shadow and saw just the fluttering edges of his coat and his scarf. He tried to focus away from the agony of the pins and needles that were tingling all the way down his hand. 

“I belong to them,” Essek said, his voice flickering in and out, evidently only tenuously connected to this reality, “Let go of me!” Then his hands were coming up in the robe, and they were twisting, and Caleb felt the magic being pulled from the air, and then a force seemed to pull him, pull books and furniture and the tapestry on the wall. There was the rattling sound of the stones that made the tower trying to pull free from the mortar. He grabbed a sconce in the wall that held a small ball of light and saw Yasha grab Veth, her other hand sticking out the window of the tower. 

The shadowthing reached with all it’s arms and teeth and eyes, and with rage in her eyes Yasha sliced through the tendrils with her sword. She screamed, wings flaring, and the thing lost its grip on the ankles and bits of tower that grabbed, and went flying back towards Essek. 

Caleb watched with horror as the thing absorbed into the shadowy barrier around Essek. Caleb watched his face twist, become a mask of focus and concentration and pain, and then there was a second reverberating **BOOM** which pelted them all with book pages, bits of torn bedsheet, splinters of wood, and other unidentifiable shards of shrapnel. When it settled Caleb was moving towards the bed and wrapping Essek in his arms and he was _warm _and _alive_ and _breathing_. He was here, he was _his_ , he was theirs. 

Robed arms wrapped around him and he felt Essek’s face in his neck. “My dawn,” Essek said, “I could feel you through the planes. I knew if I walked toward the clouds I would find you.” 

“Here,” Caleb said, and went to give back the earring still clenched in his hand, but when he unfolded it there was only a jagged black scar in his palm.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, i can be reached on tumblr at [iniquiticity](http://iniquiticity.tumblr.com), or on twitter at [@iniquiticity](https://twitter.com/iniquiticity)


End file.
